Toon Timmermans got the idea for his new product during a sex scene in the movie Demolition Man. In it, characters don connected helmets to have virtual sex. After seeing the movie, Timmermans and the Kiiroo team set out to create Kiiroo, a high-tech sex toy aimed at sparking the next digital phase of intimacy–to be able to feel one another from a distance.
But Kiiroo isn’t just a sex toy. It’s also a social network that acts as a platform to use the toys. Kiiroo doesn’t see itself as a sex toy company nor a sexual platform, rather “we see ourselves as a technology company who wants to create a new community and in that community [create] the opportunity to be intimate in a third dimension,” Timmermans explained to Fast Company. And the innovation lies in the broad scope of their approach.
Timmermans, a Dutch entrepreneur who cofounded Kiiroo Technologies with his partner Reno Voet, says that his business is the Internet. In 2007, Timmermans helped found calendar synchronization tool Flogs, a company with big-name customers like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona on their client list.
With both Flogs and Kiiroo, Timmermans has employed a simple method for problem solving: Find the void in the online marketplace and create a product. By blending that approach with his overall vision, he was able to generate innovative technologies that have vast potential ushering us further into the new digital era.
Finding A Niche
In creating Kiiroo Technologies, Timmermans looked at the current market for intimacy and felt that, “everything is two dimensional.” He continued, “So you can see each other, you can hear each other but you cannot feel each other.” He explained that there are so many picture- or video-laden options like Snapchat, Tinder, and Grindr that facilitate getting carnal with a partner or multiple partners either in person or online.
“That’s why Snapchat was invented,” Timmermans says. “To send each other pictures that won’t get online,” as a first stage of getting intimate together. Tinder and Grindr are the more aggressive apps, teasing users with hot-or-not photos to find potential hookups. Yet there’s nothing on the market that allows you to get physically familiar with someone through the portal of the Internet.
Kiiroo was designed to give users the sensory feeling of intercourse with a lover, friend, or stranger. However, this is not a simulated experience, this is real-time correspondence of users’ nether regions.
